NEW NORMAL | Week 2 | Sermon

But the reason that I bring up football is just, man, we're all excited to be able to watch football again. But I was looking at it this week and maybe you've heard the story, but in the late 50s and early 60s, the Green Bay Packers were kind of a floundering franchise. They were just starting to become what is now the kind of dynasty that is the Green Bay Packers. They had just hired a new coach named Vince Lombardi.

And in 1961, Vince Lombardi took the Packers to it wasn't called the Super Bowl yet, but he took them to the NFL championship game. And in the fourth quarter, they actually had a lead. They ultimately would lose that lead in the fourth quarter and they would finish second in the league in 1961.

Well, in July '61, they show up to training camp. They show up again to their first week of mini camp and they're expecting, they've interviewed a bunch of the players and the players said that their expectation showing up to training camp that year is that they were gonna take and build off of what they had started, the momentum that they had. They had a lot of team unity. They had a lot of the same players coming back. And so they thought, man, if we just build some trick plays and get some kind of razzle dazzle into this thing, we can take the momentum that we had last season, carry it into this one and we will be unstoppable.

And so it was to their surprise

that the first day of training camp, their new head coach Vince Lombardi gathered all the players, the same players that just a few months before were in the Super Bowl. They had made it all the way there and finished second. He gathered all of them in a room and he started training camp by giving what is now one of the most famous football speeches of all time.

He stood in the room, he held a football up and he said, Gentlemen, this is a football. To which the room was like, yeah, thanks, bro. We're not all professional football players, right? And he started to tell them how a football works and the leather and the stitching and the things that go into it.

And he told them, I want you to open your playbooks to page one. And he took the defending Super Bowl runner-up team back to the basics. And he showed them the playbook that had the essentials of blocking and tackling and passing and running. And he told this group of men who had just finished number two,

he said, if you will become devoted to executing on the fundamentals and running the basics and becoming hyper focused on the fundamentals, I promise you we can build something special together. Well, this team would go on to win the Super Bowl that year. They would win five of the next seven Super Bowls.

They would never lose a single playoff game. And Vince Lombardi would never coach a team that didn't have a winning record. It's why today, why the team who wins the Super Bowl, they're handed a trophy

that's called the Lombardi Trophy because Vince Lombardi has gone down as one of the greatest coaches in NFL history. The reason that I start there is what we're gonna see today in the book of acts is that the fundamentals, the basics, the commitment to the core essentials,

it's not just something that builds a winning football team. I promise you, it is the way that the church

becomes the unstoppable force for good that we're supposed to be. I will submit to you today that as we go back to Acts chapter two, as we open the playbook, if you will, to the blocking and tackling the basics, the fundamentals,

the foundation of the Christian experience, if you and I will not just understand it intellectually, but be committed to being individuals who live it out, I promise you, it will produce incredible

things in our life, but it will also begin to do what has always done from the beginning. It will create an unstoppable force for good all around us.

Here's what we're gonna see today in the book of Acts. If you're taking notes, I want you to write this down. The big idea we're gonna spend the next few moments looking at. Acts chapter two is going to show us that faith is something that starts internally. It's something that happens individually by ourselves.

But if that faith is going to grow, that faith always has to grow in the context of other believers. It happens with other people committed to walking this thing out

together. If you missed last week, let me just catch you up real quickly. Okay? The book of acts is the very beginning of the church. This is immediately following the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. He walked and he had a ministry for three years. He ultimately would be crucified for the claims that he made to be God. And then he's come back to life. He gathers his disciples and the bible says that he spends a few weeks with them. He spends time with them, taking them, opening up their minds and connecting the dots between the old testament, all the prophecies that were fulfilled in the person of Jesus. Jesus supernaturally

connects those dots for the disciples. And this group of 120 men were ready to run through a brick wall for Jesus. But he tells them, don't go yet. I want you to wait and and I'm gonna send you a helper. And it shows us that on our own inspiration, motivation,

it doesn't last very long out in the world. When we're persecuted, when opposition comes against us, we can't live the Christian life by ourselves. He tells that.

We're we're

to

would send. It came in the form of the Holy Spirit. It's the third part of the triune God that we worship. We believe in the Trinity, God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all separate but equal parts of God. The Holy Spirit falls on them and they go from 120 to 3,000 people in one moment.

And it's interesting to note that in the book of acts, it says that the Holy Spirit looked like tongues of fire over the people. Because what's interesting about that is if you look at the movements of Jesus, if you look at the movement of the message of Jesus, it spread like wildfire after this moment.

It would go from Jerusalem to Queen Creek, Arizona in a matter of moments. And if you're here today and you're kind of skeptical of the person of Jesus, what I would encourage you to look at and take an analytical approach to is look at the movement of the message of Jesus.

I would argue that the movement of the message gives a ton of validity to the person of Jesus. There is no message, there is no movement in the history of world, of the world that has spread as fast, has gone as far as the message of Christianity.

It has crossed racial boundaries. It has crossed cultural boundaries. It has crossed social boundaries. It has survived tyrants. It has survived dictators. It is without a doubt one of the most perplexing movements in the history of the world if it's not true.

I would argue that the movement of Jesus that spread like wildfire proves that maybe just maybe the person behind the movement is who he claims that he is.

Here's what's crazy. If you look at fire, essentially has three elements. For fire to become something that like we're seeing in Maui that is heartbreaking. For fire to become something that is incredibly dangerous, that is incredibly hard to stop. The firefighters refer to it as the triangle of fire, the fire trifecta.

There's three things that fire needs to be sustained to a point that you almost can't stop it. Fire needs a fuel source. It needs something that's going to burn, a piece of paper, a piece of wood. And then it needs some source of heat, something that's going to take that element and ignite it to the point of combustion.

Those two things in and of themselves, they're not that destructive because once the fuel source burns up, the fire goes out. Where it becomes really dangerous is when you get the third part, when there's oxygen introduced to it. And what you had in Hawaii is you had this hurricane that came in and blew

the down power lines, the fire source that was created from the fuel and the heat source. Now you have oxygen feeding the flame and that becomes something that will cause incredible destruction. I think the reason that is interesting to note is the movement of the message of Jesus,

it has the same three components when you look at it in the early church. They're still the same three building blocks. You need the source of fuel. You need the person to burn with.

You need the person that's willing to go, yes, this is me. The movement of Jesus, I want you to show I wanna show you these three things before we get into Acts two. Here's the three things that make up the movement of Jesus. The first one, the fuel source, it is the individual. It is the person.

Every single one starts with an individual intellectually coming to an understanding that okay, maybe just maybe Jesus is who he says that he is. As I look at the evidence for him being who he says that he is against the evidence that he's not who he claims to be, I intellectually can get there. This is what we refer to at Rock Point as knowing. At some point, you have to get there intellectually, but you won't be able to get there completely.

You will have to take a leap of faith. You'll have to go, okay, I think it's there. Now I'm gonna take a leap of faith and believe that Jesus is who he is. I'm gonna hand him the reins of my life. But that in and of itself, friends, that's just an ember out in the distance. By itself, it will very quickly burn out.

But if we get the second part of this thing that acts two is going to show us, which is the individual that becomes committed to this belief system, it then understands their communal, their collective, their corporate responsibility, and there's a communal response. Those two things, you now have the heat source,

you have the fuel, and then the Holy Spirit comes in and breathes on it and it becomes an unstoppable exponential force for good. That is how the message of Jesus has spread as quickly as it has. Again, at Rock Point, we refer to this as knowing, growing and going. It is the Christian experience

summed up. Here's why I belabor the point a little bit. What I wanna spend the next few moments looking at where I believe our area of opportunity is as a faith community

is right here. I think we do the individual belief thing. I think where our area of opportunity is this communal action where we grow together in intentional community.

As I look at Rock Point and where we're going and where God is taking us, this friends is the essential, the core foundation we have to go to. So the question is, what does this look like? It's a great question. I'm glad you asked it. Acts chapter two. Here's how we see the answer. It says this in verse 41.

Again, is a little bit of recap from last week, but it says, those who believed what Peter said were able

to so so And gonna And

filled with the Holy Spirit and he proclaims, he quotes from the Old Testament and he says, guys,

all the prophets kept whispering about a day that God was going to restore what was broken in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis three, when sin entered the world, what was broken was man's relationship with God. But even more than man's relationship with God, what was broken was man's relationship with each other. Remember

Adam and Eve's first kids, one kills the other one. Right? There was this massive devastation that happened in the relationship that we had with each other. But the prophets kept whispering about the day where God would come again and the breath of God, the the ruach that was breathed into man in the very beginning to take him from dirt to being the Imago day, that what was broken in the garden, there was gonna be a day through this Messiah that would come where that would be restored again. Peter stood up in Jerusalem at this festival and said, guys, it's here.

It's Jesus. He's the one. He's the Messiah that's restoring what was broken. Everything that we've waited for, he's the fulfillment of it in literal revival breaks out. 3,000 people go, we believe this. They get baptized. They go through the process of taking their next step in their faith journey, and the church is born.

Here's why I love this. The thing that took people from being outside the family of God to being in the family of God, from being enemies of God to being friends of God, you notice what it is? It's not action. It's not behavior.

It's not, hey. Figure out your pornography issues and then come in here and we'll talk about having a relationship. Hey, get your relationship with your girlfriend together. Stop sleeping together. Then come in here and we'll talk about you and God having a relationship.

The entry to the family of God is not predicated on you doing everything correctly. Based on you believing that Jesus is who he says that he is.

Belief is what gets you in the door. It is what separates Christianity from every other faith in the world. You can't earn it. You couldn't be good enough. But the gospel is that while you and I were still enemies of God, he came running after us. And if you believe that he is who he is,

you're in. And it starts with belief. But what I want you to see is it doesn't stop with belief. Belief is not the finish line. It's the firing gun that says now the party has started, but we have a responsibility.

We have something to do. We have something to be a part of. This is where we see what our communal response looks like. 3,000 are added. The church begins. Verse 42,

it says, all the believers, all 3,000 of them, they devoted themselves to four things. The apostles teaching, to fellowship, to sharing in meals, and to prayer. Notice it. It starts with belief.

The entrance into the family of God to be a part of the kingdom of God. It's not action. It's not behavior. It's not voting a certain way. It's believing that Jesus is who he says that he is. And what begins to happen is you have to then make a decision of whether or not you're gonna devote yourself to the people of God.

The very beginning of the church starts with a group of people devoting themselves to a few things. The first thing that they do is they devote themselves to this thing called the apostles' teaching. What's the apostles teaching? Man, you guys ask good questions this morning. Keep going.

The apostles teaching is exactly what we're doing. They would come together in large gatherings and somebody who is further down the road in their faith journey. One of the apostles that had had their minds opened and understood the Old Testament. They would open the Bible. They would open the Old Testament.

They would open up the word of God and they would walk through what the word of God said and what Jesus did to fulfill it and who they were. And it was an important part of their faith experience. It was an important part of their faith journey. They devoted themselves to doing it.

But it was only one of four things that they devoted themselves to. Here's my fear of Christianity today is for most of us, this is the totality of what our Christian experience looks like.

And the danger is is that if this is all the biblical community that you have, you are as connected to your church as you are to the people you go to a movie with on the weekends. You walk into a room, you watch a performance, and then you walk out of the door and you live your own life.

And I'm telling you, you are missing some of the most important parts of your faith journey. I don't want something from you. I want something for you.

Devoting yourselves to this thing, it will produce something in you that is better than anything that we can get out of this world. The second thing they devote themselves to is fellowship.

I don't know why when I think of fellowship, the first thing my mind goes to is the fellowship hall in the church that I grew up in. Anybody have a fellowship hall? All I know is nothing fun ever happened in the fellowship hall. They would claim that there'd be something fun, and I would show up like, this is lame. Like, I don't want anything to do with the fellowship hall.

Luckily, the early church did not devote themselves to the fellowship hall. They devoted themselves to what is written. Again, the New Testament is written in Greek. This is a word if you've in church, you've probably heard it before. It's this word koinonia.

It's it's a picture of a group of people that were committed to a a common cost. It was this covenantal relationship of a group of people that said, look, we're gonna do this thing together. We're moving somewhere together. This is not just a friendship.

This is not just girls going to brunch together. This is not a knitting club or a bridge club or a fantasy football group or a bunch of guys going to play golf. It's much more intentional than that. This is people meeting for a spiritual purpose and said that they ate meals together.

It's a picture of a people who weren't in a hurry, that weren't just trying to check the box of, yeah, I checked the box of Christian community. I did that. Now I can move on. It was people that live life together.

I don't know about you, but I don't really go to dinner with people that I don't like. I fake a headache and get out of those dinners, right? I eat with people that I'm trying to get to know, that I'm trying to form a relationship with. The early church devoted themselves

to living life together, to not being in a hurry together. And the very end of it shows us that the last thing they committed themselves to is prayer. There was a spiritual thread that wove through this entire thing. This was a group of people that were meeting for a spiritual purpose,

that were coming together to do what the Bible says, to allow iron to sharpen iron. It says when we come together, we will make each other better. It says that when we come together, that's where we can do what the New Testament says, where we work out our salvation

with fear and trembling. The picture of working out your faith. It's active. It's something that we pursue. It's something that we invest in. It's not something that we stumble into. I love that it says the early church, the foundation, the blocking and tackling of Christianity was people who were devoted.

You and I, we have to remember as a church, as the body of Christ, there's a few things that are supposed to define us. One of those, if you're taking notes, I want you to write this down. We are supposed to be an intensely devoted people. We are people who don't just haphazardly go through the motions. We are intensely

devoted. We are devoted to doing this, to showing up for church because it matters. We are devoted to gathering together for a spiritual purpose during the week, to get together, to be a part of something. And here's what I have to tell you. You will get out of your Christian experience what you put into it.

You will get out of this thing what you put into it. Don't expect a 100% return if you only have a 10% investment. You can't expect a 100% of the peace of God that surpasses understanding when you only make a 20% investment into the kingdom of God.

This is the lie that the enemy has convinced the Western church of is that you can just haphazardly do church. You can just dip your toes in the water of faith. Friends, we can't do it. This is, it always has been kind of an all or nothing thing. The early church understood church wasn't something that they went to.

Church was who they were. Everything else flowed from the most important decision to them that we are now the people of God who have been restored and redeemed in the eyes of God. We were once hostile. We are now friends of God. And from that posture, every other decision is made.

And I'm telling you, if you go all in and devote yourself to this thing, there is not a better return that you can get on anything else in this world. But you can't expect a 100% return with only partial devotion. We should be as the church and intensely devoted people.

This is who we are. This is what we do. Here's how the story continues. It says that after they make this decision, after they devote themselves, verse 43 says that a deep sense of awe came over them all. And the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders, and the believers met together in one place.

They shared everything that they had. They sold their properties and possessions and shared the money with those that were in need. It's so subtle, you'll miss it if you're not looking for it. The disciples

devoted themselves to one another. They devoted themselves to coming to church. They made a decision to show up, to live life together with people pursuing a spiritual end, to do life together, not just for fun, but for an intentional expansion of the kingdom of God. And notice what happens after

they make a decision to take action. After they decide to be devoted, after they go all in, it says, then what overwhelm them

was a sense of awe and wonder at what God was doing in their midst. They would see the miraculous happen all the time. They would give of anything that they had to meet the needs of the people in their community.

I think the reason this is so important for us to see is sometimes one of the things that keeps us from taking our next step in our faith journey

is we tell ourselves we'll do it when we feel like doing it. I just don't feel like joining a LifeGroup right now. I just don't feel like serving right now. I just don't feel like giving right now. But when I do, when I feel like it, when I'm inspired to, then I'll do it. What Acts chapter two proves to us is that your feelings

will follow your actions. You and I should not be people who are led by our feelings, but we have to lead our feelings with intentional decisions. They devoted themselves, Then the feelings came. Then the awe and wonder

took over. Let me make this really practical for you, man. I I love watching people come in the doors during worship. Right? People walk in the doors of church and the lights go down and the music starts and some of you, I can see you starting to cringe and start to like, oh man, this is where the weirdo people come out and they're like dudes in the corner jumping up and down. You're like, I'm gonna go get some coffee or I'm gonna use the bathroom right now, right? You're like, but at least we'll get through this and then the pastor guy will come back and the normal stuff will happen again. But for a lot of us, worship is something that's just for like emotional people. Right? It's like, this is where the emotional people do their thing, but we'll get through this pretty quickly and then we'll be back to the rest of church.

Here's my challenge to you if that's you, because I was that guy for a while in church where I didn't necessarily feel like putting my hands in the air. I didn't feel like expressing myself with my body with a response to God. Here's what I would challenge you to do for the next few weeks if this is you.

Walk in the doors of church and understand the Bible tells us that something happens corporately when we gather together, That there's something supernatural in our midst when we gather with a spiritual purpose and we come together and we sing worship. We don't do it randomly. The Bible is very clear in what we're supposed to be doing.

And I would encourage you when it starts and when you start to go, okay, this is where the weird stuff happens. I would encourage you just close your eyes and begin to pray and just go, God, this dude next to me, I wish he would stop bumping into me. Like, I just put his hands down.

Like, I don't get it. I don't understand it. But God, I'm here. And I'm choosing to not be led by my feelings,

but I'm choosing to lead my feelings with decision. So God, right now, as we worship, would you speak to me and pray a simple prayer like that? And I'm telling you, if you do that for a few weeks, I promise you what will happen is you'll begin to hear worship songs differently.

You'll begin to hear the rescue plan of God sung in worship and you'll begin to feel things in your heart that you begin to feel the sense of awe and wonder. And I promise you, if you do it for four or five, six weeks, I promise you, probably week seven or eight, you're gonna be that guy. Next thing you know, you're not gonna go like full on out, you're gonna be like, boom. Okay. Like, I'm right here.

I'm as engaged as I'm gonna get. If my wife looks, I'm gonna my hands back in my pocket. Right? Like, Nobody better take a picture of me. You won't go full out, but you'll be that guy. And next thing you know, you're like, dang it, I'm turning into a weirdo. And if you begin to engage your physiology, you make a decision to devote yourself, I promise you, give yourself six months, you're going to be that guy crying in the corner like, God, you're so good. I get it. This is amazing.

And next thing you know, you're gonna be the emotional one that people come in and go, oh, man, this guy, this guy,

here's why I tell you to do that. It's a really simple thing. But friend, if you allow your feelings to dictate your spiritual experience, you will always, always, always miss what God is doing in the midst.

But I promise you, if you make a decision to be devoted in every arena of your life, what the Bible tells us will happen is the awe and wonder. The feelings will follow it, but you got to make a decision first. You have to decide to commit. I love that it says the early church, when they would get together,

they just were willing to do whatever it took to meet the needs of the people in their community. They were willing to sell stuff if they had to, to meet the needs of people around them. I look at the early church and I look at the markers of them. And one of the things that was so clear

is that it didn't matter what it took. They were going to meet the needs of people in their community. If you fast forward a couple chapters to Acts chapter four, we see this picture of the church that is just incredible. It tells us in Acts chapter four verse 34

that in this community of thousands at this point, there was no needy people among them because those who own land or houses would simply sell them, bring the money to the apostles to give to those in need. There's an element of the new church,

the beginning of the church that I think is still supposed to be one of the defining characteristics of you and I. And that's that you sell your house and give me all your money because the Bible says so. Just kidding.

I think the indicator, the marker of us really being the people of God is we're supposed to be an irrationally generous people. I think people should look at the way that we give, the way that we serve, the way that we love, and they should scratch their head going, this doesn't make sense.

But when you understand what Jesus has done for you and you have a heart that's been regenerated, what begins to happen is you go, man, how can I meet the needs of people in my community?

How can I do this in a way that brings glory and honor to God? And I wish I had an hour to tell you all the stories of the generosity that's happening in this church. So many of you get this. So many of you are living this and let me just encourage you to continue to do it. We should be a generous

people. Here's the last couple of verses as we start to wrap up. It says that they sold everything that they had. They were wildly generous. And then in verse 46,

the new church, they worship together at the temple each day. They met in homes for the Lord's supper and they shared their meals with great joy and generosity, all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. Each day, the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.

It said they did this where they gathered in the temple every day. So starting on Monday, for those of you who are real Christians, we will be here at 07:00 on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. Could you imagine it'd be terrible for all of us, right? They did this every day.

They understood that I don't go to church. I am the church. We are the church together. It's not a building that I go to. It's an identity of who I am. So they went to the temple every day, but then they did something that I cannot encourage you enough. They meet together in homes.

They would gather in small groups and they would walk through life together. They would share meals and their hearts were full of joy and generosity. And as I read that and I see where we are as a culture, I go, man, this is some of the basics that we need to get back to.

You know what's crazy when you look at it when sociologists

are studying us in the grand experiment that we're in a decade or so into social media and this new normal of being connected to thousands of people from junior high and high school and all over the place and being the most connected group of people in the history of the world,

you know what? The exact same time we're the most connected, we're also the most lonely that we've ever been. We're the most isolated that we've ever been. They say that of adults, thirty one percent would say that I feel lonely multiple times a month. And thirty one percent is a lot. But when you look at young adults,

it goes to sixty percent to sixty two percent of young adults identify as saying, I'm incredibly lonely. Yet I have thousands of followers online. I wonder what the next generation behind them is going to be. A generation that's had a cell phone in front of their face from the moment they were born.

I'm not blaming social media in and of itself. I think it's one of the many things that's led to this massively isolated

and lonely group of people. Here's why I say that. For those of us in this room that have kids, it's one thing to stand on a soapbox and say how bad social media is and how we have to live differently.

It's an entirely different thing to see our kids look at the way that we live and the way that we prioritize our schedule and how we decide, you know what, we're going to devote ourselves to this thing. I don't necessarily get it. It's inconvenient.

There's days that I don't want to do it. I lead a home group at my house on Wednesdays and half the time I'm like, man, I don't even want to do this. I'd rather do something else. But I did it on Wednesday because there's never Wednesday night football on, right? Because otherwise I would choose that.

And my kids know that my parents prioritize an intentional time where we gather as a community together because here's what I see. Here's the dilemma. If this weekend experience is our only Christian community throughout the week, I don't know how we live acts two out if this is the only community that we have.

Acts chapter two makes it clear that we need a place that we can gather in smaller groups where we can be really known.

And here's why I would implore you to wrestle through this on your own. I don't think that these things we see in the early church, the markers of what the early church was known for, I don't think they're just useful things to understand. I think they are keys to really beginning to understand

who you are and how you're wired. I think inside of every single human are two deep core longings. All of us want to belong somewhere. We want to be a part of a community that's going to miss us if we're gone, that loves us in spite of our mistakes, that accepts us for our shortcomings. All of us desire that.

But I think more than just wanting to belong, we also wanna be a part of something that is creating impact,

that's doing something bigger than what we can do on our own. This is why guys say things like, yeah, we just drafted this player and our team won the Super Bowl. It's like, really? You were a part of the team? Like what position do you play? Does the GM call you to consult before you make draft choices?

We say things like that because inside of all of us is this desire to be a part of something. But I would challenge you to see these are shadows of what the real community we're supposed to be a part of, the people of God, a place where we can have deep intimacy with one another,

but also be a part of something that is having great impact. Friends, this has to happen in the context of small groups. Here's what I wouldn't let you in on. Here's what is kind of wild with what God has been doing in our community here at Rock Point. You know in weekend attendance, we just crossed 6,000

people in a weekend attendance. Like, it's mind blowing what God has done to grow our weekend attendance. And that's awesome. It's great. I think we should share it. It's supernatural.

If we were to submit the numbers to the people that keep track of it, I bet you we would be, if not one if not the, probably one of the fastest growing churches in the country over the last five years. And it's amazing and it is supernatural what God is doing here. It's also a big problem

because the larger we get, the easier it is for us to miss you and for you to come in every week and hide. Here's the challenge with all of this is I can't force you to be in community.

You have to make a decision to go, yes, starts with belief, but then I have to devote myself to this thing. I have to make a decision. I asked our small group pastor this week, okay, 6,000 people in weekend attendance.

How many people show up and we have in small groups during the week? You know what the number is? It's about 700. 6,000 people come to the show on the weekends.

600 have said, yes, I don't just believe, but I'm devoted to doing this thing. I don't say this to beat anybody up, but I just say, look, there's only about 10% of us, little more than 10% of us that are gathered in home groups trying to figure this thing out. What I'm telling you is if you're here and you're not in a home group, I don't think you need to pray about it. I think you just need to figure out how to do it, how to make it a priority. And I know right now all the things running through your mind are all the reasons why it won't work. And I would affirm most of them. It's going to be weird for a while. You're going have to reprioritize things on your schedule. I'm not trying to convince you to get more friends and add another thing to your calendar because you just need more friends and more things to do.

But what I am challenging you to do is to go, if you really want your faith to grow to something that can change generational lines,

that can change the story of what your family's always been, that can really grow into something that can impact the world, it will not happen on your own. We need each other. You have to make a decision to get in. You have to make a decision to invest in it. And I promise you, it will be worth your time

because this is who we're supposed to be. This is what the church has always supposed to have been about. And I love that this story ends, this section of acts two ends with when we do this, when we gather like this and we talk about Jesus and we share what he's doing in our lives with each other in a small group setting, it says that more are added to their numbers every day.

Why? Because it's just so attractional. There's something about it that the world looks at and they go, what's different with them? I think this is how we practically do what Jesus said. How will the world know that you're my disciples? Because you vote and post on Facebook about certain things. That's not what he said.

He said the way you love each other, the way that you're united in spite of your differences. You realize in Acts two at Pentecost, you have people from multiple different regions that don't even speak the same language. Yet somehow they figured out how to be united around the message of Jesus.

Here's the last thing if you're taking notes that I would implore you to understand about the early church friends. This is who we are. We are supposed to be unapologetically Jesus people. This is not something that we do. It is the most important defining characteristic of who we are.

I wanna close by just telling you a story. Again, I run a small group at my house on Wednesdays. Let me just give you a caveat. No, you can't join it, so don't email me.

Truly, I'm just saving myself some work this week. But when we moved back here from San Diego, started to pray like, okay, God, how do we get into community? We know this is important and we felt like we should start one. So we prayed and said, okay, God, who should we invite into this home group? And God gave us specific couples to invite into them. And one of them was this guy that I just gotten to know recently through a random series of events that I met at church. Him and I had started going to the gym together and we just come from totally different backgrounds, totally different worlds. He had just gotten married. I did their wedding and he was trying to figure out this new faith thing because he was a new Christian.

And I said, hey, man. I think you should just come to our house on Wednesdays. There's gonna be, you know, eight or nine couples. Get together. We'll open the bible and just live life together. And he was like, you want me to do what? Like, come to your house and talk about feelings? Like, there's not even a football on Wednesday night. I like, what are we gonna do? And he initially was like, no. Like, thanks, but no thanks.

I said, man, just give it a try. Like, just show up. And so him and his wife started coming. They've been in our life group for about a year now. So this week, I asked him.

I said, hey, man. What do you think being a part of a small group has done for you? How has it helped you? How has it made you grown? Because it's one thing for me to stand up here as a pastor and tell people, it's a whole another thing for you as just somebody who's walked through life, who has gone through this faith journey to get to share what being a part of a community like this has done for you. And let me remind you that this is a guy who, again, I got the privilege of baptizing in my backyard probably six months ago. This is actually a picture that we have of me getting to baptize Andre in the backyard. This isn't a guy that some seasoned Christian that has it all figured out, He's got tons of questions, but he's walking through the process of allowing Jesus to make him new. And I wanna show you this next picture of this same scene

just because of how powerful it is, because of the redemptive story of Jesus that this picture shows. So again, this is Andre getting baptized in my backyard. This is his wife, Dana, that's here. Some of their kids that are here. And if you notice the he got mad at me last service because I called him a little Italian guy. So he's a really tall Italian guy. Not really. He's small. But this guy right here, who's just one of my favorite people on the planet, this is Dana's dad.

And the reason that I love this picture so much is because the person standing at the edge of the pool most excited about what God is doing in Andre's life is the same guy who three years ago was trying to keep him away from his daughter because Andre was dangerous.

Andre wasn't good to Dana and a loving dad would have done the same thing. But because of what Jesus has done inside of Andre's heart, his her dad can now sit there and celebrate the restoration of what God has done in them. We've now had the privilege

we've had the privilege of getting to walk with them through this transformation over the last year. I close by just reading you what Andre text me this week of what being in a small group has done for him. He said, I have to be honest, my first thoughts about joining a home group were

no, but he used some adjectives I had to take out so I could read it at church.

He says, I couldn't wrap my mind around getting together with people that I didn't know and opening up my life to them. He said, truthfully, growing up, I've never really opened up to people or let them see my whole life. I've only ever wanted people to see certain parts of me. He said the thought of living life with a group of individuals that I didn't know was terrifying.

He said the first time that we got together, I got the sense that the group of people I was surrounded by was a nurturing group. He said every one of us came from different backgrounds, but we all had one thing in common. And that was that we all loved God and other people.

He said, every week I found myself wanting to open up more and wanting to get to be known and to be a part of everyone else's life.

Being with a group of men that were all married and in love with their wives was a new thing for me. He said, growing up in my household, I didn't see love very often. I never saw affection.

So to see so many couples happily married but still have issues to work through, he's talking about the other couples, not my wife and I, obviously, That they can work together and get through was inspiring.

Being newly married and new to my faith, the group has encouraged me to and inspired me to want to branch out and love other people. The group has helped my marriage because I have other men that I can talk to and relate to in situations.

It's helped my faith to be around other people from different walks of life knowing that you don't have to know it all. You don't have to have grown up in a perfect Christian household to know who God is.

I think the relationships that I've developed in our home group are some of the best friendships that I have in my life. He said, truthfully, you being my pastor and somebody they can call a friend has given me the confidence to walk a faithful life and know that I don't have it all I don't have to have it all together as long as we're collectively pursuing God together.

Come on, we can clap for that. Here's why I share that story with you is to implore you. If you're sitting here today and you're in a home group that is just kind of hanging out and living life together, press in. Press into the purposes of God for your life individually and your life collectively.

And if you're here today and you're not a part of some type of small group where you open the word of God together, you sit under the apostles teaching, you break bread, you learn, you grow and you know together, I cannot challenge you enough to try it.

Here's what I can promise you. If you do it, if you devote yourself to do it and you do it for a year,

at some point you will get past being in a room full of strangers and it will become a family. And it will become something not that you have to do, but it will be something that you get to do. And here's my promise to you. If you do it for an entire year, at the end of the year, your life is worse than it was the year before. Bill has promised to give $500 cash to all of those people. So come find him. He'll give you the cash if it doesn't work.

I wish there was some way that I could give you a guarantee. But what I promise you is the Bible is clear. The blocking, the tackling, the fundamentals, the basics of our faith. It has always been something that, yes, it starts in the individual. It starts on our own.

But if we want it to grow, if we want it to become something that is unstoppable, where we continue the advancement as the kingdom of God, we have to do it together because faith will start internally, but it grows externally.

Can I pray for you, Father? God, I thank you for people that are in this room this morning. God, I know that even getting here some days can be difficult. So I commend them just for being here.

God, I pray that we would not be stagnant in our faith journey. And for those of us who are here, that we've had the moment where we've invited you into our heart, we've acknowledged you as Lord, and we're not a part of a biblical

community, God, would you give us the courage and the boldness to sign up? God, I ask for every single person that's here, that is a part of that, that they would take the next step in their faith journey.

God, give us the boldness and the courage to do it. It's in the name of Jesus, all God's people said, amen. Hold on. Don't leave real fast. I forgot the most important thing. As I was praying, it came up. Okay. Here's your next step. We

have an event coming up in two weeks called Find Your Circle where you can do this. This is where we will gather, our small group team will rally around you and we will put people together. We'll find you people that are in your area, that are in a similar season of life as yours. This is your entry point if you're new to this thing. Go to rockpoint.io.

You can sign up, show up to find your circle, and take your next step and get into biblical community. Amen?